PA GOBBLER

QDM people can you tell me what the official count for dpsm should be. the reason i ask is i saw a hunting show that said 25dpsm is perfect for QDM and i thought that was high. can anyone give me info on that please? or point me in the right direction. thanks[/align]

kevin1

I live in a region that averages 30-45 dpsm , and that's way too many , so our DNR has designated these counties as reduction counties with increased antlerless limits that don't affect your seasonal bag limit .

"Correct" dpsm is relative to the forage available , and 25 sounds high for nearly anywhere . You also have to remember that the hunting show you watched was more than likely shot at a managed facility with huge food plots or other manipulated forage , and probably supplemental feeding as well . Hardly representative of average conditions . Don't believe everything you hear on tv , they're trying to sell you something .

Bob S

Too often hunters get hung up on numbers of deer. Carrying capacity and the number of deer per square mile are basically useless numbers. Below I have posted two quotes that refer to carrying capacity.

There can be major problems with density calculations on smaller properties, unless the property is fenced. In fact, in my professional opinion, "deer density" measurements are basically meaningless on properties under several thousand acres. They are interesting to track, but not that valuable.

Deer move around, and some deer move around a lot. A census conducted at one time of year can show very different numbers that a census at the same location during a different season of the year. When you get down to deer density calculations for 400 acre properties, those numbers are highly suspect.

In fact, I'm constantly telling hunters not to get too hung up on density numbers. You simply can't manage "by the numbers" on smaller properties. It is completely incorrect to make assumptions like, "If the deer density is 30 deer per square mile, and we have 780 acres--which is 1.22 square miles--then we have approximately 37 deer to work with..." Deer densities don't work that way. Deer not only have large home ranges, they often have very different seasonal ranges. They may spend their summer on one property, yet spend the fall hunting season on another property a mile away. We seem to see a lot of these separate seasonal ranges with older bucks.

Then throw in that during the course of the season, you may have many, many more deer crossing/utilizing your property than at any one given time, that really confuses the matter. It is common for season-long censuses to show that 2-4 times as many deer as the density suggests actually cross and utilize the property over the course of 5-6 months.
For example, at any given time, I have between 30-40 deer per square mile in my area. However, from mid-July to the end of January, we photographed over 80 individual deer using my property.

Without question, the first thing a client wants to know after we've assessed their property is, "How many deer do we have?" Simply human curiosity and the common human desire to break everything down into understandable numbers. However, they're always shocked when we tell them we don't know and we really don't care. We don't manage by deer density numbers. We manage by how the current population is performing under the current habitat limitations. Actual performance is everything, and that is where harvest data is invaluable. You have to know how body weights and reproductive success are doing in relation to the current population/habitat conditions.
Bryan Kinkel, Woods and Associates, Inc.

calculating "carrying capacity" is very difficult and many assumptions must be used (although with a detailed habitat map, some fairly good predictions can be made). But then, in reality, the actual carrying capacity number alone is not a very useful number unless you know your exact deer density.

People are always shocked when they ask us, "How many deer do we have" and we answer, "We don't know and we don't really care." Actual density numbers aren't that important in and of themselves. What IS important is how the current density is relating to the available for food resources, and that can only be determined by examining the habitat at the lowest food production time of year, late February and early March. What plants are present in the environment? What plants are being browsed and what are not? How heavily are the plants being browsed? Those are the questions that need to be answered.
Bryan Kinkel, Woods and Associates, Inc.